Rights Groups, N.Y. Mayor Sue Over Welfare Reform

Coalitions of civil rights groups and the mayor of New York on Wednesday filed separate suits to block a key provision of the nation’s new welfare law, charging that it violates the constitutional rights of legal immigrants who will lose federal disability and food stamp benefits because they are not citizens.

The suits, filed in New York and California, charge that the law violates the equal protection clause of the Constitution by specifically targeting a particular group and stripping them of federal benefits that are provided to every other legal resident who meets the basic criteria of the programs.

The three suits, filed by advocacy groups including Legal Aid and the Center for Constitutional Rights, represent what many social policy analysts anticipate will be a wave of attacks challenging the legal underpinnings of the historic welfare law.

The outcome of the immigrant suits is critical not only to states with large populations of legal immigrants but also to the entire law, because the cases challenge a portion of the measure that is responsible for more than a third of its budget savings.

Many of the nation’s governors, mayors, state legislators, and civil rights and immigrant rights groups as well as President Clinton have asked Congress to restore disability benefits to legal immigrants who were in the country when the law was passed, particularly the elderly and infirm who are unable to become citizens, and thus avoid the cutoff. The president also wants to restore benefits to disabled children. His proposal would cost $13.4 billion between now and 2002.

Noncitizen immigrants will be one of the first groups to feel the effects of the new welfare law. About 500,000 immigrants nationally, including 110,000 in New York City, face the loss of Supplemental Security Income beginning this summer. Only those immigrants who can prove they have worked for at least 10 years, served in the armed forces or have a family member who did, or are refugees or asylum seekers who have been in the country less than five years are exempt.

Since those affected by the cutoffs are elderly and disabled, the federal benefits they receive often are their only source of income.